After Paul Foster was named chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents in August, Charles Miller, a Houston businessman who had served in that position for more than three years, sent him a note.

“I told him it’s an easy job,” Miller said. “You just have to solve difficult problems 24/7 and spend the rest of your time putting out the resulting fires.”

Foster is no slouch. His predilection for hard work began with a paper route at age 11 and developed during summers as a teenager laboring in the New Mexico oil fields where ...

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Seriously, what's the difference between making a large Freedom of Information Act request of a public university and "demanding thousands of documents from UT-Austin?" Also if that's only part of why he is being scrutinized, what's the other part?

Wallace Hall, Brenda Pejovich, Alex Cranberg, Gene Powell, Charles Miller -- what a perfect storm of crazy. That UT has survived an era dominated by this crack team is testament to its enduring strength.

Now, let's put Powell out to pasture, impeach Hall, send Miller back to the senior living facility and try to move on in a reasonable way. It will take some time to recover from the seeds of "discord" so carefully and intentionally sown by Powell.

When are the Regents going to respond to the open record requests submitted by the legislature. It's nice to talk about transparency and accountability. I'm happy they tackled the difficult issue of how the system responds to requests at their last meeting. It's time they put up or shut up and produce the records that have been requested by the legislature. The sooner the Wallace Hall cancer is excised from the Board, the better. Foster couldn't possibly be worse than Powell, but he did vote along with the crappy regents to authorize the the second investigation of the Law School Foundation along with Pejovich, Cranberg and Hall.

When are the Regents going to respond to the open record requests submitted by the legislature? It's nice to talk about transparency and accountability. I'm happy they tackled the difficult issue of how the system responds to requests at their last meeting. It's time they put up or shut up and produce the records that have been requested by the legislature. The sooner the Wallace Hall cancer is excised from the Board, the better. Foster couldn't possibly be worse than Powell, but he did vote along with the crappy regents to authorize the the second investigation of the Law School Foundation along with Pejovich, Cranberg and Hall.

September 1, 2013 @ 4:17 p.m.

Patrick Stone

“I think it’s almost ironic that you have a committee on transparency and you have a regent who is being chastised pretty badly for what appears to be an effort to create transparency,”

What's ironic is that Foster still believes Hall "appears" to be creating transparency. If that is truly the case, he has either not been paying attention or he has no issue with Hall's destructive approach. Either rationale does not bode well for the campus. I still don't trust Foster for the simple reason that the governor includes him in his rah-rah emails to the other bad seeds on the UT Board. At least with Powell we were dealing with a simpleton--Foster might be a teaspoon's worth more intelligent and a lot more sneaky. Bad combination.

September 3, 2013 @ 9:41 a.m.

Pickles Sorrell

Did everyone pick up on this statement -

" He said he still had that concern but intended to leave the evaluation of presidents up to the system’s chancellor, Francisco Cigarroa, who he said “has the support and trust of the board.”

Translation: The Chancellor will recommend that Bill Powers be fired and the Regents will say "okey donkey.' And Powers will be gone without all the muss and fuss.

Paul Foster is no different from Gene Powell on these issues, he is just a lot smoother. Get ready UT, somebody is coming in with a big fire hose to clean from top to bottom. And it is long overdue.